THE HISTORY OF THERAPEUTICS 



The history of therapeutics, or medicine, extends far back 

 into the remotest antiquity. The earliest traditions are derived 

 from Indian (Upavedas, Agurveda, Susrutah des Dramoantari), 

 Egyptian (Isis, Osiris, Horus, Harpocrates, priest medicine), and 

 Hebraic (Moses, Levites, prophets, Essenes) literature. Very old 

 also is the Chinese medicine (Ching de chung Ching). But the 

 real scientific therapeutics begins only with the Greeks, with 

 an introductory period which may be designated as the philo- 

 sophical (Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras, Alcmseon, Empedocles, 

 Anaxagoras, Democritus). The Grecian medicine was also in the 

 beginning a "priest medicine." The so-called Asclepiadae were 

 associations of priests, purported to be founded by ^Esculapius the 

 god of medicine, who held temple-polyclinics in which they prac- 

 tised their secret medical art, which was transmitted by oral com- 

 munication. Out of one of these temples of Asclepiadae at Cos 

 came Hippocrates (400 B.C.), the founder of Grecian medicine. 

 His teachings, the humoral pathology, entirely dominated Grecian 

 and later also Roman medicine; its influence extended even through 

 the middle ages into modem times (sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 

 turies). The writings of Galen (131-200 a.d.), which were regarded 

 as medical dogma of Biblical authority throughout the entire 

 middle ages, a period of not less than fifteen hundred years, are 

 nothing more than an amalgamation of the medicine of Hippoc- 

 rates with the philosophy of Plato. The Arabian school (900- 

 1000 A.D.) introduced by Rhazes and Avicenna, and the so-called 

 Monks' medicine, especially the school at Salerno (about 1100 

 A.D.), were also founded upon the teachings of Hippocrates. The 

 Arabian school also included the new factors of alchemy and 

 spiritualism. 



In the sixteenth century, Paracelsus (1493-1541) began the 

 actual reformation of the Galenic and Hippocratic teachings. 

 Believing chemistry to be the basis of therapeutics, he created his 



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